Narodni Galerie V Praze ; National Gallery in Prague Hardcover -

Prague, Czech Republic: Shalom Neuman. Hardcover. Near Fine+/None. 2018 Our photos depict the actual book offered. Clean and bright pictorial boards. Otherwise, like new. Binding is tight. Interior is unmarked. Quarto. Ships from US. Larger size may require extra postage; any increase will be submitted to customer for prior approval. BOOK INFO: Text by Enrico Baj, Donald Kuspit, Robert Morgan, and Lester Strong. Glossy, clean & bright full-color reproductions throughout, with photos of live events at the end. 'To enter the universe created by New York-based artist Shalom Neuman is to enter a realm of glitzy brilliance, artistic virtuosity, and technological sophistication, tempered by an underlying vision of the world that is anything but upbeat. Neuman calls his work *fusion art,* and it's art with a message. Combining color, motion, and sound into a multidisciplinary, multisensory extravaganza aimed at appealing to more than just the visual sense, it reflects and comments on a contemporary world he sees as seriously out of joint and in need of repair. Not least among Neuman's work is his America paintings, a series of portraits bearing simple title of everyday names like Evelyn, Normal, Lulu, or Fred. [These portraits] are of imaginary individuals. Second, the faces they depict are created not just from paint, but from everyday objects discarded as useless by their original owners, then appropriated by Neuman for his art: a small plastic toy or marble serving as an eye, a badminton birdie or syringe as a nose, a bent toy stethoscope as a mouth, and so on. Third, they incorporate sound effects like music and spoken word poetry, available at the push of a button. Neuman's portraits at first glance appear colorful, playful, whimsical, seeming to mimic real people, even to the point of speaking or producing music, in a humorous way. But a careful examination shows them to be more than a little disturbing. Constructed from the detritus of our society, they reach beyond the individual to comment on a culture where rampant consumerism threatens to engulf us all, a form of identity theft writ large that threatens our very humanity. As the title of the series indicates, Neuman identifies the source of this calamity with trends in contemporary America.' (~from an introduction). Shalom Tomas Neuman (born July 27, 1947 in Prague, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech born American artist, museum founder, and the driving force behind the visual arts concept of fusionism. He studied at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia before earning dual BFAs and MFAs from Carnegie Mellon University in Sculpture and painting. Neuman has taught at Cooper Union and Parsons School of Design and been a visiting lecturer at The School of Visual Arts, the Pratt Institute, and Yale University. Neuman is a member of the Rivington School. Neuman is a 2015 recipient of a Premio Galileo Giglio d'Oro award in art upon which occasion he produced a Fusionism even at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence. He is closely associated with the New York City literary collective The Unbearables.